Live Cinema / Jennifer Levonian, Martha Colburn, Joshua Mosley

Live Cinema/Histories in Motion presents a program of animated films by three young artists for whom the moving image and its cinematic qualities have become the prevailing form of expression. Jennifer Levonian, Martha Colburn, and Joshua Mosley employ animation to examine both personal and communal experience. Combining paper cut-outs, collages, drawings, watercolors, and sculptures with stop-action techniques and computer technology, their animated films employ cinematic devices to create stories that reflect a range of experience, from daily interaction to ideological debates. Each artist's animation and accompanying artworks will be on view for approximately one month.

Take your Picture with a Puma (2010), by Jennifer Levonian, uses autobiographical details and French new-wave cinema references to create an intricate story set in Mexico. Using filmmaking as a medium, Levonian transports the viewer to a universe where cinema provides a common language to communicate emotions in a way that animated characters cannot. Take your Picture with a Puma will be on view April 30 – May 31, 2010, with accompanying watercolor collages by Levonian.

Martha Colburn's Join the Freedom Force (2009), a fast-paced collage of images inspired by street protests around the world, utilizes the language and materials of filmmaking to comment on popular culture, consumerism, politics, and sexuality. Through a collage of live-action (paint-on-glass) animations, found footage and documentary filmmaking techniques, Colburn creates a mesmerizing and unsettling portrait of contemporary issues. Samples of Colburn's elaborately layered collages will accompany Join the Freedom Force, which will be on view June 1 – June 27, 2010.

Joshua Mosley's International (2010) focuses on two historical figures, the American builder and philanthropist George Brown and Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek. Using photographs of pivotal places in the lives of the two protagonists, Mosley constructs an imaginary conversation that identifies Brown and Hayek's perspectives on how a nation's economic and social order should ideally evolve. International will be on view June 29 – July 25, 2010, together with a sculpture installation by Mosley.

"We are pleased to present this group of talented artists, some of whom have close ties to Philadelphia," said Adelina Vlas, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. "Although different in subject matter, style, and processes of production, the animations in Histories in Motion take aspects of our reality and render them into thought-provoking and open-ended narratives."

Live Cinema/Histories in Motion
Jennifer Levonian, Martha Colburn, Joshua Mosley